802.11ad, or more commonly known as WiGig, is a short range wireless data transfer protocol designed for multi-gigabit connectivity. 802.11ad is theoretically capable of up to 7Gbps, which is about twice as fast as the theoretical maximum of 802.11ac Wave 2 however, its effective range is only about 30 feet.

Unlike 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ac wave 2, 802.11ad operates on the 57-66GHz frequencies, more commonly known as the 60GHz band. Due to the way radio waves work, higher frequency bands lack the wall penetration capabilities of lower frequency bands, but because there’s less interference in higher frequency bands, a wider amount of frequency can be used to transmit data allowing for greater throughput.

Adware is short for Advertising Malware. It’s a form of malware designed to show its victims unwanted advertisements so the attackers can generate income. Generally the victim either did not choose to install the malware willingly, unknowingly installed the malware, or knowingly installed the malware after being misled as to what it actually does.

Generally, adware isn’t considered a serious form of malware, but rather as a nuisance. Due to adware requiring its victims to watch advertisements or track its users online activity to generate money, it typically won’t destroy a user’s system, but will be annoying and also delivers personal information into the hands of malicious attackers.

Types of Adware

Adware comes in many forms with some designed to collect its victims’ browsing history data, some serving unwanted ads such as popup ads, and some even demanding payment from its victim for removal of the ads.

Popups – This type of adware is designed to serve you unwanted ads to generate revenue for the attackers. If you have ads that seemingly pop up out of nowhere, you probably have an adware infection on your system.

Tracking – This type of adware is designed to track your online activity to deliver the types of ads you’d likely click on and to collect information about you to sell to third parties.

Ransom – This type of adware is designed to show you unwanted ads, but also provide you with an option to remove the ads for a payment. Typically this type of adware are most often found in fake anti-virus or anti-malware software which tell you your system is infected and offers you an easy way to remove the infection for a fee.

How to Remove Adware

Removing adware is generally done using software such as dedicated anti-malware software such as Malwarebytes or combination anti-virus/anti-malware software such as Bitdefender.

Why Dynamic Refresh Rate is Important

Dynamic or adaptive refresh rate technology is important because video content is not always sent to the display at the display’s native refresh rate. Take for example a game. During times when little is happening in the scene, framerates could easily hit 150 FPS or higher while during scenes of high activity such as an intense firefight, frames could dip down to 30FPS or lower.

As monitors have traditionally only only operated at a fixed 60Hz (60 FPS) or newer monitors at 144Hz (144 FPS), during scenes where little is happening the user will experience screen tearing, while during scenes where a lot is happening the user will experience studdering or lag.

AMD FreeSync Versions

FreeSync

The original implementation of AMD FreeSync, which we’ll refer to as FreeSync 1, includes all the basic features of FreeSync.

AMD FreeSync vs Nvidia G-Sync

AMD FreeSync was first released back in 2015 shortly after Nvidia announced G-Sync. Unlike Nvidia’s G-Sync solution which was expensive to license and implement, AMD promised FreeSync to be a similar variable refresh rate technology that would not only be free of charge, but would also be adopted by VESA, the Video Electronics Standards Association, as a part of their DisplayPort 1.2a specification under Adaptive Sync. As a result, any monitor that’s DisplayPort 1.2a compliant will support AMD Freesync.

How Do I Use AMD Freesync?

In order to use AMD FreeSync, you’ll need to purchase a FreeSync compatible monitor, and a FreeSync compatible AMD graphics card or AMD APU. FreeSync compatible graphics cards include the AMD Radeon R7 and newer and FreeSync compatible APUs include the AMD A6-7400K and newer.

Bitlocker is an encryption feature in Microsoft Windows operating systems which allows full disk encryption of the operating system’s drive as well as device encryption for attached devices using industry standard AES 128-bit or 256-bit encryption.

The feature was first rolled out in Microsoft Windows Vista for customers who purchased the Ultimate or Enterprise versions of the operating system and is currently available for customers of the Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education versions of the operating system.

Broadband in telecommunications is a term used to refer to any technology that utilizes a “broad” band of frequencies to transmit data.

When used in the context of internet services, broadband refers to practically any technology newer than dial-up internet. These include technologies such as DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), Cable, Fiber Optics, Wireless (Mobile Broadband), Satellite, or BPL (Broadband over PowerLines). Currently, there are no official specifications that define broadband.

In computers and other electronic devices, a cache is a portion of memory or disk space that’s designed to help speed up the user experience by storing frequently used files in either memory or mass storage for more immediate access. Typically, the most common caches include the memory cache and disk cache.

1. Memory Cache

While memory caches aren’t the type of cache we typically think about, these caches serve a vital role in computing. As memory such as the RAM in your system, SRAM in CPUs, or VRAM in GPUs, is orders of magnitude faster than mass storage such as HDDs or SSDs, the memory cache allows the memory to store commonly accessed code or code that’s about to be used so that it can be loaded and executed quickly.

2. Disk Cache

Whereas memory caches are caches of data stored in memory, disk caches are simply caches of data stored on the disk. While memory caching is always preferred for the best performance, memory is usually not only expensive, but is also limited in capacity and typically doesn’t store data persistently. As a result, data such as that from the browser cache or temporary file cache is better off stored on a disk cache.

Browser Cache

The most commonly known cache is the browser cache. The browser cache is a cache for internet browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, etc. The browser cache stores webpage data such as HTML, CSS, images, etc. locally on your system so that data doesn’t need to be re-downloaded from the website’s servers thereby helping the webpage load faster and reducing the amount of bandwidth used.

Generally, the browser cache is a disk cache as the data is stored on the non-volatile disk, but for those with high performance systems with large amounts of memory, the browser cache can be set to use memory as well.

In AMD CPUs, CCX is an acronym used by AMD to refer to the Core Complex used in AMD’s Zen architecture based processors. Each CCX is a modular unit which contains four Zen cores connected to a shared L3 cache. Multiple CCX are then connected together using AMD’s Infinity Fabric interconnect to then create processors. For example, AMD’s Ryzen 7 processors contain two CCX while AMD’s EPYC 7000 processors contain four CCX.

Cherry MX switches are mechanical keyboard switches manufactured by Cherry Corporation. Cherry MX switches are considered to be the gold standard of modern mechanical keyboards. First invented back in 1983, the Cherry MX mechanical switch has been in production for over three decades, but has only recently seen a resurgence due to the increased popularity of mechanical keyboards in the past few years. Currently, Cherry’s MX mechanical switch patents have expired leading to many companies such as Kailh, Gateron, Greetech, and others to produce “clones” of the iconic mechanical switch.

Coil whine is a phenomenon in electronics where electromagnetic coils within an electrical circuit exhibit a high pitched sound as electricity passes through the circuit. Typically, this is most often heard in high performance computer components such as graphics cards and processors, but is actually very common in other electronics such as fluorescent light ballasts.

While annoying and sometimes a bit scary, coil whine is simply a result of sounds made as electricity passes through electrical coils. This is typically a result of poor engineering as these sounds can be minimized by utilizing coil dampening techniques. Rest assured however, no damage will occur to your system.

The CPU, also known as the Central Processing Unit, is one of the core components in a computer that includes all the logic needed to process programming instructions. CPUs are often also referred to as processor or microprocessor. Some people erroneously refer to the entire computer as the CPU.